


minutes into hours (hours into years)

by Simply_Isnt_On



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Amnesia, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Lup in the Umbra Staff (The Adventure Zone), Post-Episode: e067-069 Story and Song Parts 1-3, Sibling Love, Umbra Staff (The Adventure Zone)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-20
Updated: 2020-08-20
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:40:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26003551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Simply_Isnt_On/pseuds/Simply_Isnt_On
Summary: Lup gets her life back, gets her body back. But those ten years in the Umbra staff have changed her, and Taako too, and bridging the difference proves harder than they expected.
Relationships: Barry Bluejeans/Lup, Lup & Taako (The Adventure Zone)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 36





	minutes into hours (hours into years)

**Author's Note:**

> I spent way too much time trying to edit this to be just right, but now I need to just be done staring at it, so here it is. Enjoy!  
> Thank you to [Peannaireacht](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Peannaireacht) for reading and beta'ing, and to my other friend who read it over (twice!) for me. I love you guys.

Liches don’t see the way elves and humans do.

Sure, liches can identify different people, different places. They can navigate through space, and leave glaring ominous warnings on walls.

But that doesn’t really involve sight at all. In Lup’s experience, at least, sight as a lich consisted mainly of magical auras, shadows, and fire.

(The fire was hers, she was sure of it. When she pointed it out to Barry after they first changed, she’d had to share her magic with him before he knew what she meant.)

***

Inside the Umbra Staff, everything was muted, fuzzy. It stood to reason it would be- the thing continually sapped her strength, and while she meditated and stored arcane energy, the outside world faded. Which was why it came like a slap in the face when hands closed around her staff, hands she’d seen heal her family, hands that had buried her own body more than once as she stood watch in her spectral form.

Merle. Merle was here, but also not. Something was- something was missing, some magic, some skill. She reacted on instinct- this wasn’t right, an imposter perhaps. She could feel satisfaction oozing from every inch of her as he was flung away.

And then-

Lup fought tears, fought to stay whole when her very being sparked and flashed in recognition. In her quiet captivity, her memories had begun to fade, but this hand- she would know this hand anywhere.

It was Taako. Her beloved Taako, hands that had held her own, magic that had grown with hers, the person who was a mirror of her very soul, he was so familiar. And in the moment it took to get herself under control, he had picked her up. He held her. She was _home._

But something was wrong. Something here made her so very uneasy. Something was wrong with her brother, but it was him, entirely, completely. She resolved to think about it later, and began to explore how far her magic could reach. They were together, now, again. She’d find a way to help him until he could get her free.

**

She began to understand when they reach Lucretia. Lup isn’t sure where they are- isn’t sure what’s happened to Lucretia, because she’s different too, just like Magnus and Merle, but Lucretia feels- whole.

Lup watches Lucretia put the boys through their paces, and can’t stand to watch Taako struggle with something so simple as retrieving some gems. Magic Missile happens almost without thought, something she pulls from Taako’s subconscious and channels through herself.

And there it is. The missing piece. Taako’s subconscious is- it’s so far away. She doubts he can find it even in meditation, things he knew so far buried that he thinks – perhaps rightly – that he is useless.

Lup digs deeper and finds holes, her brother’s mind riddled with them like swiss cheese. She finds memories of growing up on the road, of learning to cook, of finding spell books, memories that mirror hers in all ways but one.

In each memory, Taako is alone. She watches him, barely 6 years old, so young, toddling around their aunt’s house. He falls, and then he is sitting, laughing. Lup remembers that moment- she learned to walk after him, but she’d seen him falling and a blast of warm air buoyed him up and prevented him from cracking his head. She remembers holding his hand after, remembers how her aunt had laughed. Her little evocation wizard- or witch, as Lup would declare the next year.

Taako doesn’t remember any of it. Lup sees him stand up, toddle towards a corner- and then there’s a shiver, and ten minutes have passed, and she is gone.

**

It’s not hard to understand what’s wrong with Taako, after that. She’s missing. She’s missing, and she’s missed ten years with him. Maybe more. And her anger builds. Lup rages against the black curtains once again, calling out for Taako, her brother, the face of her heart- and he’s oblivious. He can’t hear her, without his training, without his memories. He doesn’t know she’s gone.

It takes too much energy to rage that long. She almost loses herself, there, alone in the umbrella, and- she will not let that happen. She draws back, meditates, meditates, trying to understand how to help.

She finds her chance in Goldcliff. Taako, against all odds, even without his sister and his learning, is incredibly gifted, and the battlewagon race fills her with joy. And then, the arcane core is there, smashed to pieces, defeated- and Lup drinks it in. The power of it flows over her, through her, and now she can _see_ , for the first time in so long, her brother’s form, his magic. Even with pieces missing, it’s beautiful.

Now she can fight with him- and she does. Sloane would kill them all, and Lup can almost smell the silverpoint poison. Merle’s magic is here, too, shades of blue surrounding them, tainting the fight. Her old friend’s relic, used against them. And though she had known they were used for evil, she hadn’t expected the sash’s magic to be so familiar.

She draws on Taako’s power, Taako’s knowledge buried so deep he doesn’t know it, and allows it to shape the path of her power. She pours her rage, her pain, her love for her brother into that fireball, and revels in the satisfaction of destroying something so massive. Taako’s shock slams into her, and she revels in that too. _Yes, Taako, you’ve always been powerful._

Lup could have stopped Hurley. She can hear, as the power of the spell fades, the snap of Hurley’s safety harness open. But Lup is selfish, and she’s not ashamed of it. Taako must survive this; she is unwilling, after all this time, to lose him again.

The umbrella opens as the bubble floats away. Taako, Merle, Magnus- they pass out with the force, and Lup channels the last of the arcane core to guide them safely down.

It is only then that she feels regret. Hurley will not survive this.

She watches Sloane cradle her lover, and clutches the memory of her Best Day Ever like a lifeline. That could have been Taako. That could have been Magnus, or Merle. That could have been her, if Barry had been at Wave Echo Cave that fateful day.

Lup forces herself to watch. She has no other choice.

**

It’s difficult, after the day of Story and Song. Lup is hard to separate from Taako, and Taako, though still angry and hurting, doesn’t object. She lingers at his side while he eats, and places herself between him and Lucretia whenever they assemble as a family. She can almost feel rather than see his rage, tinges of purple all over his magic that leave her breathless. This man, she reminds herself, has spent a century at her side, learning arcana- and even before that, he had been nearly top of his class. That anger is dangerous.

Barry follows too, reaching out every so often for her hand before letting his own fall to his side.

Taako doesn’t like it when Lup watches him sleep. He claims liches still make him twitchy, and so Lup finds herself wandering the moon base. It has been remade into a sort of field hospital, a place those made homeless by the war against the Hunger can go when they can’t find anywhere else.

Most of the people on the moon base belonged to the Bureau of Balance, or to their family. Boyland’s family came here, after, to pay their respects. But all of those refuges are asleep now, and Lup is looking for someone. She finds him, finally, in the atrium with Fisher’s empty tank. He’s crouched on the floor beside Johann’s desk, cleared now of the half-written music and dust, and he is crying.

The first time Lup found Barry crying, he’d tried to hide it. Barry Bluejeans, science officer of the IPRE and a well-respected academic, had resolved long ago never to burden others with his fear. But this Barry, lich Barry, Barry the red robe who guided their family home- this Barry welcomes Lup to share in his sadness.

Ten years ago, Taako might have been there too; and the space at Lup’s side feels empty, but as it is Lup crouches beside Barry as best she can and reaches for him with her magic. Like this, nearly touching and finally together, they almost feel whole.

**

It takes barely a month for Barry to acquire a tank, and then Lup finds herself with somewhere new to be. She studies the magic and science it’s made of, spending hours each night staring at her body forming. Soon, though, it becomes unnerving, as her face begins to take shape and her limbs become recognizable again, and she returns to wandering the halls.

The waiting is torture. She catches Barry watching her, sometimes, and can almost feel his desire, the urge to kill himself and hold her again. But it’s worth the wait.

It’s worth it because she hasn’t seen his face in so long, just the silvery-teal light of his power. She misses Taako’s face, but she always misses Taako’s face. Her desire to be corporeal wanes, and then one day, it surges.

Lup is at the tank first, but then Kravitz is there, with a blessing from the Raven Queen to add to the mix. Slipping into her body feels like agony, and then the Queen’s permission settles over her like mist, softening the agony, and she sighs.

And chokes.

There’s a rush, a vacuum as the door is wrenched open, and then Barry catches her. She cannot see, her legs as weak as a foal’s, and she lets him clean her with a spell, lets him wrap her robe around her.

She smiles. She looks down at herself, the view simultaneously irreconcilable and completely expected.

Lup looks up at her lover. “I’m about to smooch your fucking brains out, Babe.

**

Here is what hurts most.

Taako flinches away from her hands. Her body remembers reaching for him, does so without thought; a pat on the shoulder, leaning into his space for a drink, brushing his hair away from his face.

Curling around him at night, safe with her brother at her side.

Taako, her dear, beloved Taako, pulls away. Jumps when she pats him, pulls away frowning without a thought when she leans into his space.

The first time she climbs into bed with him, he wakes screaming.

That is not the worst. Lup, the older sister by minutes- her body is younger than his. Taako, whose face was nigh-unchanged for one hundred years, is older. It’s nearly imperceptible, but it’s there, lines at his eyes, hair longer than she remembers. He’s less beautiful, somehow, in a thousand tiny details, his chin rounder, his ears shorter. His hair has lost some luster, frizzes a little more in the rain. His eyes- his eyes don’t light on her when he’s thinking anymore.

This Taako remembers her. This Taako, who sometimes stops mid-sentence to hug her, to stroke her back, is older. This Taako jumps at her sudden movements and drops knives while chopping meat, but when she tries to catch them he frowns and pulls away.

Lup realizes it wasn’t safe for him to save space for her at his side, during their time apart. His body has half-forgotten the sister he remembers vividly.

Lup knows he doesn’t mean anything by it.

It burns like fire anyway.

**

Here’s the nice thing about returning to her body, after so long without: incorporeal liches can be overwhelmed by sadness, can tear apart from the sheer strain of emotion.

Bodies? Bodies can cry.

On the Starblaster, Lup never appreciated it fully, but here, on the moon base, separate from her brother for the first time ever, Lup lets herself lose control at long last.

Alone in the abandoned throne room, Lup rages and screams, tears rolling down her face. It hurts, it _hurts_ like nothing else. She’s not even aware she’s called fire into being until the cobwebs disappear in a flash, and then she collapses on the floor, sobbing.

Unlike Taako, older, sadder Taako, she looks to her left. She wants him to be there, beside her, wants him to be the one that helps her off the floor, wants him to be the one to hug her and soothe her. Her body expects him at her side, expects him to come find her.

He never comes. She cries until she’s numb, until she has no more energy to choke on her sobs, and then she stares across the room at the empty throne, considers the hole in the ceiling where she’d destroyed a tendril of the Hunger. In all those years traveling from universe to universe, she’s never seen the aftermath of a fight; they’d never been able to stay after the Hunger arrived.

There are vines growing in through the hole. Lup wipes her face and stands, eyeing them. They seem very new, the green of young plants obvious in the fading reddish light. Around them, she sees a new color, one so faint that it’s almost indistinguishable from the plants themselves. It’s a color she recognizes.

***

They were very scared, the day they become liches. Terrified. Lup woke clutching Barry’s hand, only to find that he’s holding hers just as tightly. They’d tossed and turned for hours, and while normally Lup slept in Taako’s bed when she was scared, this was different.

If this didn’t work, she might never share Barry’s bed again. Separating her soul from her body meant dying, meant collecting all of herself into one being of pure energy, and she couldn’t ignore the fear. But she could combat it, like this. These tiny moments, holding Barry’s hand, sharing his warmth, the best day ever, kissing Barry, living with Barry on her other side, dying beside Barry- these would help her hold on.

And so they woke Taako, before the gray light of dawn could turn to gold. And there on that hill, Barry and Lup kissed, and then- they hadn’t told Taako the specifics. They’d meditated together for weeks, carefully mapping the edges of their souls, and now Lup cast- and Barry cast-

It felt like dying. It felt like dying, over and over, a thousand times, pure fire, pure arcana- Lup screamed, and found that she couldn’t. The responses of the corporeal were no longer hers to command. It burned to feel her body fall away, and panic encroached, singing along the lines of herself, unraveling her. And then she stopped it in its tracks.

Because there, at her center, was Taako. There was the best day ever, there was cooking beside him, there was learning to walk with his hand in hers. There was Barry, their duet, there was their first kiss, their best date, their shared day of love. There was the her that didn’t live in her body. There was her family. There was her reason to hold on.

The panic began to fade, and Lup looked around and fought the sensation of choking as she realized that seeing was different. But there, across the field, was an entity she knew. It was Taako, her brother, and the panic which had begun at the change in sight disappears. He’s here, and he’s green, green, green all over with hope. She knows. She can see it.

Lup can see it. She can see the yellow of sadness, the red of fear, and the green of his hope. He’s waiting for her, hoping she survives this.

This is a ritual Lup knows. Taako needs her. Taako loves her. Taako wants her to come back.

She turns to look at Barry, and joy of joys, he has survived. She collects herself, gathers the edges of her magic, and watches Barry sink back into his body.

Lup turns towards Taako, and dabs. And the color of hope takes over completely, and as she sinks back into her body and Taako rushes over to her, she realizes it’s still there. That brilliant, brilliant green. 

***

They’re just vines, Lup thinks, as she hurries outside and scales the building. How can they have hope? Maybe she should ask Merle…?

But she’s not seeing things. These vines, growing into a broken building, torn apart by emptiness itself, are full to the brim with hope, and it lights the roof under her.

Lup leans down to touches them and her breath catches. She remembers Goldcliff suddenly, remembers how the pillar of vines had exploded when she’d focused the power she’d absorbed from the Arcane Core. She focuses, and sees beneath the green a glimmer of blue- Merle’s magic.

All those years of running, of fighting. All those years struggling to find the Light, and the time they’d spent trying to destroy it. These vines were full of its magic, shaped by Merle all those years ago into the Gaia Sash and given life in a moment of war. And now here they were, in this refuge built atop the Starblaster, atop Lup’s only home, and they’re growing.

Lup sits on the roof for a long time, stroking the leaves and staring out across the Bureau courtyard. There was no place for these vines anymore; they had been thoroughly destroyed in the fight at Goldcliff. But here they were, clearly brought back and given root by loving hands, and they had begun to grow, to make a new place to thrive.

Lup thinks about her place at Taako’s side, how she fit in his shadow like a puzzle piece, how her body knew to reach for his when she was scared before she could even think.

It’s long dark by the time Lup climbs down, but she barely notices. Her thoughts are overflowing, and if she had been able to see herself, her whole body would have been lit up green.

***

After all those years in the Umbra Staff, her body is almost unfamiliar; some days, she begins to float out of her body without thought, and more than once she’s woken screaming at the curtains in her dreams, convinced she’s finally tried too hard, convinced she’s fading away at last. Those nights Barry is there to catch her, to comfort her while she sobs and ground her until she can sleep again.

And Taako, her brother, her touchstone- Taako is older, and scareder, and he still glares at Lucretia when she’s in the room. But a week after she gets her body back, he asks to show her something in his room, and though he’s talking about the shattered pieces of the Umbra Staff that he had collected, his eyes flick nervously at the pallet of blankets he’s made on the floor beside his bed.

The night she sleeps there is stiff and cold, but Taako reaches down in the dark and grips her hand when she jerks awake from a nightmare she can’t quite remember, and she can see the green of his hope in his fingers linked with her own.

Sometimes he jerks awake too, reaching for her before recoiling, and it hurts to see him remember that she’s there, nearby, beside him in the dark. And he always reaches down to her when he remembers, and Lup watches as, day by day, a new color begins to shine through. Orange like fire, like destruction, like gentler than sadness and stronger than fear.

One morning she wakes to find him gone, and when she pads into the kitchen he’s already frying bacon. She takes it in and moves carefully, gathering ingredients, hands on autopilot as she whips them into a smooth batter. And if she hesitates when she turns to the stove, because Taako’s already there, well. Who could notice?

Lup is ready to wait her turn, goes to set her bowl of batter down and hop up on the counter, when Taako reaches over and flicks on the burner to his right. When he glances back, she can see yellow flickering in his eyes, fearful and expectant, and green. But most of all she sees orange love, sparkling all over his body as he grins at her. She can see the space he’s left at his side, still too big, too far away, but he sets a pan on the burner with a carefully casual air and turns back to his bacon.

“Y’know, those pancakes aren’t going to cook themselves.”

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! I wrote this in 2018 when I should have been sleeping for an ochem final, which might be why I failed it. Anyway thanks for reading!


End file.
